ChatGPT reached 894 million unique users in April 2026, and the number continues to grow. People use the large language model developed by OpenAI for everything, from organizing their daily routine to working on business projects. We’ve prepared the latest ChatGPT statistics to reveal unique insights about this LLM, its impact on other industries, and future trends in artificial intelligence.
- ChatGPT reached 894 million unique users in April 2026.
- Every day, ChatGPT processes over 2.5 billion prompts from global users.
- As of May 2026, ChatGPT recorded nearly 1.44 billion mobile app downloads.
- OpenAI expects to reach $280 billion in revenue by the end of 2030.

Key Growth & Usage ChatGPT Statistics
These ChatGPT user statistics show that the LLM’s user base continues to grow. We have prepared the most interesting and up-to-date facts about the platform’s market share, user base, and potential.
Growth in ChatGPT Users
How many people use ChatGPT? Here are the main statistics on its current user base and growth potential:
- The number of ChatGPT users has grown at a remarkable pace, with the platform reaching 1 million users in just five days. (Statista) It was an absolute record until the release of Instagram Threads, which gathered a similar audience in an hour.
- As of April 2026, the platform reached 894 million unique users (including Microsoft Copilot users). (FirstPageSage)
- ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly active users, meaning both returning and new users. (OpenAI)
- The estimated quarterly user growth on OpenAI’s platform is nearly 4%, which indicates a strong pace of development. (FirstPageSage)
The table below shows how the platform has grown its audience within 12 months:

| Month & year | Million users |
| May 2025 | 603 |
| June 2025 | 723 |
| July 2025 | 812 |
| August 2025 | 838 |
| September 2025 | 845 |
| October 2025 | 856 |
| November 2025 | 858 |
| December 2025 | 878 |
| January 2026 | 883 |
| February 2026 | 888 |
| March 2026 | 891 |
| April 2026 | 894 |
The user base has increased by at least 3 million people every month since the beginning of 2026. Although the growth has slowed compared to 2025, these numbers still signal the platform’s popularity worldwide.
Monthly ChatGPT Traffic and Engagement
ChatGPT outperforms numerous popular platforms when it comes to the amount of traffic and engagement metrics:
- The platform ranks #5 on the list of the world’s most visited websites, with ChatGPT traffic reaching over 5 billion monthly visits. (Semrush)

Here is a short comparison of the website’s monthly traffic with other popular platforms:
| Platform/website | Monthly visits |
| 93,834,069,957 | |
| YouTube | 51,116,462,353 |
| 8,901,004,658 | |
| 5,988,674,324 | |
| ChatGPT | 5,203,584,978 |
| 5,125,224,400 | |
| Wikipedia | 4,041,917,065 |
- On average, ChatGPT users spend nearly 12 minutes and 30 seconds on the platform. (Semrush)

- People usually visit four pages before leaving ChatGPT’s website. (Semrush)
- The bounce rate on OpenAI’s platform is 38.48%, which is lower than the rates for Wikipedia (56.92%), Facebook (44.06%), and Instagram (47.74%). (Semrush)

- Organic search results drive about 8% of ChatGPT traffic, accounting for over 456 million monthly visitors. (Semrush)
ChatGPT Query Volume
Here’s what OpenAI’s own research and reports from other industry sources reveal about how people use ChatGPT:
- ChatGPT users send 18 billion messages per week. (NBER Working Paper 34255)
- The share of non-work-related messages grew from 59.8% (at the beginning of 2025) to over 68.9% (as of March 2026) of the total ChatGPT usage. (OpenAI)
- OpenAI’s analyst divided the reviewed prompts into three intent types: asking (49%), doing (40%), and expressing (11%). (NBER Working Paper 34255)

- ChatGPT processes 2.5 billion prompts from global users daily. (Yahoo Finance)
- The average number of ChatGPT queries per session increased to 1.75 by February 2026. In 2025, it ranged from 1.16 to 1.21. (Semrush)
ChatGPT App Statistics
About 22% of all traffic to ChatGPT comes from mobile devices. OpenAI has developed mobile apps for both iOS and Android, and here’s how they perform:
- ChatGPT is the most downloaded app in 2026 on both the iOS App Store and Google Play, with 200 million downloads over the first five months of the year. (AppMagic)
- The ChatGPT app currently has a 4.8 rating on the App Store and a 4.7 rating on Google Play. (App Store, Google Play)

- In February 2026, the ChatGPT mobile app revenue amounted to around $227 million, which was a slight decline compared to the previous year. (Statista)
- In April 2026, the application was downloaded nearly 53 million times on the iOS App Store and Google Play. (AppFigures)
- In February 2026, ChatGPT’s app reached about 1.44 billion total downloads since May 2023. (Statista)
ChatGPT Market Share & Competition
Despite the development of other LLMs and new AI-powered platforms, OpenAI continues to dominate the market. The statistics below review OpenAI’s position in the AI industry and highlight its key competitors:
- ChatGPT holds 76.85% of the AI chatbot market share worldwide. (Global Stats)

Other big LLMs holding strong positions in the AI industry are:
| LLM | Market share |
| ChatGPT | 76.85% |
| Google Gemini | 9% |
| Perplexity | 7.73% |
| Microsoft Copilot | 3.76% |
| Claude | 2.66% |
| Deepseek | 0.01% |
- ChatGPT also accounts for 17.6% of total digital queries. Although it’s less than Google’s (77.9%), it’s still way more than platforms like Bing and Perplexity (5.1%). (FirstPageSage)
- About 0.2% of web traffic comes from ChatGPT. (Ahrefs)
How ChatGPT Is Changing Search Behavior
Many marketing specialists view ChatGPT as a potential rival to Google because of its increasing importance in the research process and impact on the customer journey. Here’s what the data says about its influence on search behavior:
- About 18% of non-work-related queries aim to seek information. (OpenAI)
- At work, more than 11% of messages are related to seeking information. (OpenAI)
- As of March 2026, workplace users sent 2% of ChatGPT messages to search specifically for information about products or services. (OpenAI)
- As of February 2026, ChatGPT’s algorithms enable the web search feature on 34.5% of user queries. (Semrush)
If you don’t turn on the “Web Search” feature, the platform may use its own database to answer your question. It automatically opts for online search if you ask for recent information, need to get data from specific sources, or if the algorithms aren’t sure how to answer the query.
- The average prompt length for enabling the online search feature is nearly 8.7 words. (Semrush)
- Between 65% and 85% of ChatGPT prompts don’t match any traditional search keyword in the Semrush database. (Semrush)
- As of the fourth quarter of 2025, ChatGPT accounted for 19.5% of the global search-related traffic when app usage is taken into account. (Kime)
- As of the fourth quarter of 2025, OpenAI held 0.211% of the global search market. At the same time, 90.040% of the market share belonged to Google. (Cloudflare)
Does this mean it’s too early to optimize your website for AI visibility? Although Google still dominates the search space, it has implemented AI overviews and announced a full AI mode to replace the search we all know.
Traditional SERPs haven’t disappeared, so it still makes sense to include established practices in your SEO strategy, but AI systems are becoming more influential for your online visibility with every passing day. If you want Google’s AI-powered algorithms to mention your brand or your content, AI Overviews SEO is a must.
- When it comes to commercial recommendations, ChatGPT mainly considers authoritative list mentions (41%). (FirstPageSage)

The other details that influence its algorithms include awards and accreditations (18%), online reviews (16%), customer examples and usage data (14%), and social sentiment (11%).

And that’s exactly where generative engine optimization services come into play. Considering the factors that influence AI algorithms’ recommendations, GEO specialists will optimize your content so that LLMs cite it and mention your business.
Personal & Professional ChatGPT Usage Insights
People opt for ChatGPT’s capabilities to handle daily tasks across various industries, including customer service and marketing. Over 86% of SEO specialists have already integrated AI into their strategy and workflows and take it into account when setting SEO goals. Let’s review how exactly they use this platform for their daily and business tasks:
- People most commonly ask ChatGPT for assistance when making purchases in travel and hospitality (47%), retail and CPG (36%), and IT services (34%). (FirstPageSage)

- 28% of employed adults use ChatGPT for their work tasks. (Pew)
- Software development is the leading industry where experts use ChatGPT worldwide (10.27% of professional use cases). (Technology Checker)
At the same time, OpenAI’s platform is also popular with experts from other niches. Here’s an overview:
| Professional field | Share |
| Software development | 10.27% |
| IT services and IT consulting | 9.06% |
| Technology, information, and the internet | 8.23% |
| Advertising services | 6.55% |
| Business consulting and services | 6.14% |
| Marketing services | 4.29% |
- In the US, the information technology industry leads in AI adoption, holding the largest share of ChatGPT weekly active users (27%). (OpenAI)
Other top fields in the US where companies actively implement the AI assistant into their business processes are the following:
| Professional field in the US | Share |
| Information technology | 27% |
| Professional, scientific, and technical services | 17% |
| Manufacturing | 10% |
| Finance and insurance | 6% |
| Other services (except public administration) | 6% |
- The finance and insurance industry ranks 10th out of 11 in usage intensity. (OpenAI)
- Coding, writing, and research are the basic tasks for technical users. (OpenAI)
- Only 9% of the respondents refuse to access ChatGPT for academic purposes. At the same time, over 57% of them would use OpenAI’s chatbot to prepare theses. (Tidio)
- “Practical Guidance,” “Seeking Information,” and “Writing” account for almost 80% of all conversations between the LLM and its users. (NBER Working Paper 34255)
- 49% of the ChatGPT messages are sent to ask the LLM for information, 40% to perform specific actions, and 11% to express emotions. (NBER Working Paper 34255)
- 63% of respondents believe that businesses should get an opportunity to advertise their services and products on OpenAI’s platform as they do on Google Search. (Tidio)

- 32.1% of ChatGPT queries are related to practical guidance. (OpenAI)
The table below covers the categories of activities popular with the users of OpenAI’s platform:

| Use case scenario | Share |
| Practical guidance | 32.1% |
| Writing tasks | 24% |
| Seeking information | 18.4% |
| Self-expression | 9.2% |
| Multimedia | 6% |
| Other | 5.7% |
| Technical help | 4.5% |
ChatGPT Referral Traffic Statistics
Where do people come from to ChatGPT, and what do they do using it? Here are the core sources that drive traffic to OpenAI’s major platform and where users go after leaving it:
- 82.72% of ChatGPT users come from direct traffic. (Semrush)
Other important traffic sources are:
| 8.16% | |
| OpenAI’s website | 0.85% |
| Google Accounts | 0.59% |
- About 16% of users visit OpenAI’s website after using ChatGPT. (Semrush)
The top places that ChatGPT users visit after leaving the platform also include:
| 9.2% | |
| YouTube | 1.9% |
| National Institutes of Health (NIH) | 0.9% |
| Apple’s website | 0.87% |
- In May 2026, ChatGPT accounted for approximately 80% of the overall AI referral traffic. (Trakkr)
How Many ChatGPT Users Are There Worldwide?
The statistics below dive deeper into the ChatGPT user base worldwide.
Global and Regional Trends
Which countries have the most AI users, and which regions does ChatGPT dominate? Here’s an overview:
- As of May 2026, OpenAI’s services are available in 188 countries. (OpenAI)
- Singapore ranks first in the list of countries with the highest number of ChatGPT messages sent per capita. (OpenAI)
- In April 2026, the largest share of ChatGPT visits came from the US, accounting for 18.64% of the website’s traffic. (Semrush)
Here is a list of the countries that drive the most traffic to OpenAI’s platform:

US ChatGPT Trends
Since the US leads the list of countries where people use ChatGPT, let’s take a close look at user demographics in this region:
- 57% of US teens ages 13 to 17 use AI to search for information. (Pew Research)
- 34% of US adults say they have used ChatGPT; 58% of those are under 30. (Pew Research)
- 22% of Americans who have never used the chatbot say they’ve heard nothing about it. (Pew Research)
- Over a quarter of workers and 45% of people with postgraduate degrees in the US report using ChatGPT for work. (OpenAI)
EU ChatGPT Trends
The audience in Europe also actively adopts ChatGPT:
- 63% of respondents from Europe reported trying ChatGPT. (CEDMO)
- Slovenia leads among European countries, with 76% of respondents having used OpenAI’s platform. (CEDMO)
The table below shows EU countries with the highest percentages of residents who have tried using OpenAI’s platform:
| Country | Share of respondents who have used ChatGPT |
| Slovenia | 76% |
| Estonia | 65% |
| Hungary | 65% |
| Slovakia | 63% |
| Chzehia | 62% |
| Poland | 62% |
| Germany | 57% |
| France | 56% |
- Slovenians, Etonians, and Hungarians have the most positive expectations regarding the use of AI in everyday life. (CEDMO)
Asian ChatGPT Trends
Asia-Pacific countries, such as Japan, Myanmar, and Papua New Guinea, have had some of the largest increases in ChatGPT messages per capita in 2026.
- ChatGPT drives 25% of organic traffic to key retailers in the Asia-Pacific region. (Mission Media)
- Shopping-related ChatGPT queries across Asian users increased from 7.8% to 9.8% in the first half of 2025. (Retail Asia)
- ChatGPT is the most popular LLM across all countries in the Asia-Pacific region, except for China, where it’s still not available. (Otterly.AI)
ChatGPT User Age and Gender Insights
OpenAI’s models are popular with all age groups and genders, thanks to broad access and opportunities to use the product.
ChatGPT Users by Gender
First, let’s find out which gender prefers using the assistant more:
- The share of active users with female names increased in early 2026. Accounts with female names sent 53.5% of messages, while accounts with male names sent 46.5%. (OpenAI)

- At the beginning of OpenAI’s audience gender analysis (July 2024), the difference between male and female users was more pronounced (42.1% female vs. 57.9% male name message share). Throughout 2025, there was an almost equal split; in April 2025, the distribution was exactly 50%/50%. (OpenAI)
ChatGPT Users by Age
People of some ages use this platform more than others:
- As of May 2026, people aged 25 to 34 are the key age group, accounting for 35.8% of ChatGPT messages. (OpenAI)
Of course, people from other age groups also opt for this LLM. Recent trends show that older audiences have begun using the assistant more actively:
| Age group | Message share, % in 2026 | Message share, % in 2024 |
| 18-24 | 30.3% | 27.1% |
| 35-44 | 18.6% | 18.9% |
| 45-54 | 9.1% | 7.9% |
| 55-64 | 3.7% | 2.7% |
| 65+ | 2.4% | 1.1% |
- Young people (18-24 years old) ask ChatGPT for technical assistance most often, accounting for 33.2% of technical help queries. (OpenAI)
- Employees aged 18-29 are more than twice as likely to solve work tasks with the help of ChatGPT as those over 50. (OpenAI)
ChatGPT’s Impact Stats on SMB Marketing and Operations
Improved customer service, enhanced lead generation, advanced AI SEO techniques, and faster content creation — that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
AI for Customer Support
Companies spend about 8% of their recurring revenue on customer support on average. However, our ChatGPT stats show that AI can significantly reduce this cost:
- 20% of ChatGPT’s API activity is represented by customer service and content generation. (OpenAI)
- Customer support is the most popular use case for ChatGPT among financial organizations. It’s also the 4th most popular use for technology companies and professional services. (OpenAI)
- AI-powered assistants can successfully automate nearly 70% of customer requests. (Tidio)

- ChatGPT officially supports 59 languages. (OpenAI)
- 64% of entrepreneurs believe that artificial intelligence can improve customer relationships. (Tidio)

- 90% of people still prefer a human customer service specialist to an AI chatbot (SurveyMonkey).
Content Creation & Marketing
People often opt for AI content for SEO, as chatbots can craft blog posts with targeted keywords and a clear structure, increasing website growth by approximately 5%. However, ChatGPT usage statistics reveal that this technology can assist you with other marketing tasks:
- As of April 2026, only 5% of ChatGPT use cases involve marketing copywriting. (FirstPageSage)
- In 2025, 44% of 879 surveyed marketers admitted using ChatGPT, making it the most common AI model for content creation. It was followed by Gemini (15%) and Claude (10%). (Ahrefs)
- A typical 10-page document written in English will cost a user approximately 5,000-7,000 tokens. (AI Toolbox)
- As of 2026, OpenAI’s o1 and o3-mini models have the largest word limit, which is approximately 150,000 words. (AI Toolbox)
- 51% of marketers use AI tools for content optimization (including SEO and preparing texts for email campaigns). (SurveyMonkey)

- 70% of marketing specialists believe that AI will play a greater role in their work, while 48% of marketers claim that the adoption of artificial intelligence is their primary goal. (SurveyMonkey)
- 43% of marketers believe that AI is important for the development of their SMM strategy. (SurveyMonkey)
Business Process Automation

LLMs can automate a variety of business processes, including lead generation, scheduling, data analysis, and even identifying coding errors.
- ChatGPT enterprise users save up to 60 minutes per active working day. Meanwhile, people who work on tasks related to data science, engineering, and communications save up to 80 minutes per day. (OpenAI)
- Agentic workflow automation ranks among the five most common use cases among technology companies, professional services, and financial organizations. (OpenAI)
- OpenAI’s model can automatically handle 80% of routine business tasks, resulting in a 90% cost reduction compared to traditional automation. (My Marky)
- As of May 2026, the platform supports over 260 third-party apps. (ChatGPT)
- ChatGPT can analyze data uploaded in various popular file formats, including XLS/XLSX, CSV, PDF, and JSON. (OpenAI)
- ChatGPT can automate nearly 70% of admin work in the healthcare industry. (Ptolemay)

OpenAI Revenue & Business Statistics
Although OpenAI started as a non-profit organization, it reported generating $2B in monthly revenue in March 2026.
- OpenAI is valued at over $850 by private investors. (CNBC)
- It took OpenAI less than three years after launching its successful chatbot to hit $10 billion in annual ChatGPT revenue. (CNBC)
- OpenAI expects its revenue to reach $280 billion in 2030. (Fortune)
- The company plans to double its workforce from 4,500 to 8,000 employees by the end of 2026. (Reuters)
- In 2025, only 5% of ChatGPT’s weekly active users (about 35 million people) paid for “Plus” or “Pro” subscriptions. (Reuters)
- OpenAI expects that 8.5% of an estimated 2.6 billion weekly users (nearly 220 million people) will subscribe to ChatGPT by 2030. (Reuters)
ChatGPT’s Future: Trends and Expectations for 2026
Any ChatGPT statistics wouldn’t be complete without a review of the project’s future. Here are the latest data and some interesting predictions.
GPT-5.5 and Beyond
On the 23rd of April, 2026, OpenAI finally released its innovative GPT-5.5. Bringing together the best features of OpenAI’s models, it significantly expanded the capabilities of artificial intelligence and laid the foundation for advanced AI SEO tools. So, how has GPT-5.5 shown itself so far?
- GPT-5.5 gets the highest score across nine AI evaluation benchmarks when compared to other LLMs. (OpenAI)
- GPT-5.5 achieved 84.9%, the highest score among competitive models, on GDPval, a special assessment that tests LLMs’ ability to perform across 44 different professions. (OpenAI)
- GPT-5.5 tokens are 2x more expensive than GPT-5.4 on standard pricing, which is $5/$30 per 1 million input/output tokens. (AMP)
- GPT-5.5’s context window is nearly 1 million tokens. (AMP)
ChatGPT’s Market Influence in 2026
OpenAI and its ChatGPT are undoubtedly key players in the AI market. At the same time, the competition continues to grow.
- ChatGPT holds the #1 spot among AI services, according to Cloudflare’s traffic analysis. The platform is followed by Claude, Google Gemini, and Perplexity. (Cloudflare)
- GPTBot is among the most active AI bots that scan websites and collect data. It sends nearly 10.2% of all HTTP requests. (Cloudflare)
- Ahrefs estimated that 0.19% of total web traffic in April 2026 came from ChatGPT, while the combined web traffic share of other popular AI assistants was 0.09%. (Ahrefs)
Enhancements for Business Use
Although the share of work-related consumer queries has been decreasing, reaching 31.1% in March 2026, business users (including entrepreneurs and enterprise accounts) are more likely to pay for higher subscription tiers and APIs. Thus, most updates in ChatGPT target enhancements for professional use.
- On the 7th of May 2026, OpenAI began rolling out a version of the chatbot with ads for free accounts. This opens new possibilities to advertise your business’s products or services on the platform. (OpenAI)
- Codex, another popular product developed by OpenAI, is expected to be adopted by more enterprises following OpenAI’s collaboration with Dell. (OpenAI)
- In May 2026, the company launched the OpenAI Deployment Company, which aims to help other companies develop and deploy AI systems. Its investment and consulting partners sponsor more than 2,000 businesses globally, working with them to implement artificial intelligence in their workflows. (OpenAI)
Making the Most of ChatGPT in 2026
As the data show, AI has already become an integral part of the online search industry, and its role in this field continues to grow. Given that ChatGPT ranks above all other LLMs, optimizing your website to be cited by its algorithms increases your chances of attracting prospective clients.
At SeoProfy, we understand how to improve your content and technical foundation to increase your online visibility in ChatGPT and other LLMs. Our professional SEO agency offers solutions that combine traditional search engine optimization and AI visibility growth in predictable strategies that drive real results. Your audience might already be using ChatGPT to find products and services you offer — contact SeoProfy to analyze your AI performance and make your business visible in the right contexts.